816 GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 



appreciated by the ancients. The Greeks esteemed it, and their fables give 

 it a divine origin in a different sense from that of the modems ; for they in- 

 form us that Jupiter, in labouring to explain two oracles which contradicted 

 each other, perspired under his task, and from the divine perspiration the cole- 

 wort sprang. The Greek authors mention three kinds of this vegetable : the 

 crisped or ruffed, which they called Selinas, or Selenoides, from its resem- 

 blance to parsley ; the second. Sea ; the third, Corambe. Among the Romans 

 it is related that that astute people, having expelled all physicians out of 

 their territory, used the vegetable as their only medicine, and considered 

 that for six hundred years they preserved the health of their citizens by 

 so doing. Its universal use is testified by Columella's stanza :— 



" The herb which o'er the whole terrestrial globe 

 Doth flourish, and a great abundance yield 

 To low plebeians and to haughty kings. 

 In winter cabbage, and green sprouts in spring.** 



873. "Yet pleasant and sweet as these sprouts are," says Pliny, *Hhe 

 exquisite palate of Apicius rejected them for the table, and his example was 

 imitated by the equally fastidious Drusus Caesar, who did not escape the 

 censures of Tiberius for being so over nice." 



874. The Romans seem to have had three distinct kinds of cabbage. — 

 I. A plant %vith leaves wide-open and a large stalk. II. With crisped leaves, 

 called *'Apiaca." III. With smooth tender leaf. But as to varieties they 

 would have been no unworthy rivals of Battersea or Fulham in ovur day. They 

 had the Tritian, the Cumanian, the Aricinian, the Pompeian, and the 

 Sabine cabbages ; and lastly came into fashion the cabbage known as the 

 " Lacuturres," grown in the vale of Aricia, having a very large head and 

 innumerable leaves, some round and smooth, others long and sinewy, — the 

 turnip -cabbage, or B. oleracea gangyloides, of Linnaeus. The Apicinian mode 

 of preparing the cabbage was by steeping it in oil and salt before boiling. 



875. The ancients were fully persuaded that there was a sympathy in 

 plants as in animals. "The vine," says one of their authors, "by a secret 

 antipathy in nature, especially avoids the cabbage if it has room to decline 

 from it ; but in case it cannot shift away, it dies for very grief." Pliny says 

 "the colewort and the vine have so mortal a hatred to each other, that if a 

 vine stand near a colewort, it will l)e sensibly perceived that the vine shrinks 

 away from it ; and yet this wort, which causes the vine thus to retire, if it 

 chance to grow near erigan, marjoram, or cyclamen sowbread, will soon 

 •wither and die in its turn." The cause is evident ; for where two plants are 

 together that require the same juices to support them, the weaker must give 

 way to the one thai has the greater power to absorb the nutritious moisture. 



876. Numerous are the medicinal virtues ascribed by Pliny to the cabbage. 

 It is good for the eyes, for headache, for the spleen, for the stomach; for 

 wounds, either recent or of long standing ; and " if you wash little caildren 

 in the urine of a person who has been living on cabbage," says Gato, "they 

 will never be weak and puny." 



